Showing 1231 - 1240 of 3095 Items

Poverty Ends with a 12 Year Old Girl: Empowerment and the Contradictions of International Development

Date: 2017-05-01

Creator: Meghan Elizabeth Bellerose

Access: Open access

This thesis argues that international development programs focused on adolescent girls reproduce problematic and contradictory depictions of girls in the global South. Using Girl Effect marketing materials and interviews with INGO staff, I demonstrate that present-day international aid programs center on the neoliberal notion that an empowered adolescent girl holds the unique potential to end global poverty. Through empowerment programs, girls are encouraged to recognize their agency and take personal responsibility for improving the wellbeing of their communities. However, I argue that even as development leaders claim that an empowered adolescent girl is a source of indefatigable strength who can transform her community, they carry a deep conviction that such a feat is not possible without significant Western aid. Despite the empowerment rhetoric that The Girl Effect and related international initiatives espouse, their programs depict adolescent girls in the developing world as vulnerable and oppressed by poverty, local men, and their cultures. Thus, Western donors are called upon to save “Third World” adolescent girls. I argue that these contradictions in the language of international development contribute to the perception of girls in the global South as weak, inferior, and homogenous and lead to the establishment of programs that strengthen inequitable structures and sideline girls’ sexual rights.


Hybridization dynamics of a newly discovered parrotfish swarm in the Tropical Eastern Pacific

Date: 2017-05-01

Creator: Robert Barron

Access: Open access

Hybrid zones and their dynamics are important in the understanding of the genetic basis of reproductive isolation and speciation. This study seeks to investigate the hybridization dynamics of a Scarus hybrid swarm within the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) that includes four phenotypically distinct species: S. perrico, S. ghobban, S. rubroviolaceus, and S. compressus. Genetic and population structure analyses of four nuclear loci and a mitochondrial locus revealed that one of the four species, S. compressus, was the result of two different hybrid crosses: S. perrico ✕ S. rubroviolaceus and S. perrico ✕ S. ghobban. A NewHybrids model indicated that most of the S. compressus samples were F1 hybrids, but 21% of the S. compressus sample was classified as “parentals” which could also be explained by the presence of either F2 hybrids or backcrosses with S. compressus phenotypes, given the relatively low power of the nuclear data set (4 loci) to resolve complex hybrid genotypes. Significant mito-nuclear discordance in all three non-hybrid species is consistent with an evolutionary effect of backcrossing between F1 hybrids and “pure” species. This study reveals a relative ease of hybridization between parrotfish taxa separated by an estimated 4.5 million years of isolation and opens the door to further studies on the potential effects of gene flow across old species boundaries and perhaps the formation of new species by hybrid speciation in a diverse clade of tropical reef fish. Elucidating the nature of potentially “deep” F2 crosses and backcrosses within the TEP Scarus hybrid system will allow us to better understand the effects of hybridization on evolution and speciation on both a micro- and macro-ecological scale.


Some like it cold: the relationship between thermal tolerance and mitochondrial genotype in an invasive population of the European green crab, Carcinus maenas

Date: 2017-05-01

Creator: Aidan Fisher Coyle

Access: Open access

Hybrid zones provide natural laboratories to study how specific genes, and interactions among genes, may influence fitness. On the east coast of North America, two separate populations of the European green crab (Carcinus maenas) have been introduced in the last two centuries. An early invasion from Southern Europe colonized New England around 1800, and was followed by a second invasion from Northern Europe to Nova Scotia in the early 1980s (Roman 2006). As these populations hybridize, new combinations of genes potentially adapted to different ends of a thermal spectrum are created in a hybrid zone. To test the hypothesis that mitochondrial and nuclear genes have effects on thermal tolerance, I measured response to cold stress in crabs collected from locations between southern Maine and northern Nova Scotia, and then genotyped the mitochondrial CO1 gene and two nuclear SNPs. Three mitochondrial haplotypes, originally from Northern Europe, had a strong effect on the ability of crabs to right themselves at a temperature of 4.5ºC. Crabs carrying these three haplotypes were 20% more likely to right compared to crabs carrying the haplotype from Southern Europe. The two nuclear SNPs, which were derived from transcriptome sequencing and were strong outliers between Northern and Southern European C. maenas populations, had no effect on righting response at low temperature. These results add C. maenas to the short list of ectotherms in which mitochondrial variation affects thermal tolerance, and suggests that natural selection is shaping the structure of the hybrid zone between the northern and southern populations This discovery of linkage between mitochondrial genotype and thermal tolerance also provides potential insight into the patterns of expansion for invasive populations of C. maenas around the world.


Bowdoin Alumnus Volume 13 (1938-1939)

Date: 1939-01-01

Access: Open access



Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: A Logical Analysis of Moral Dilemmas

Date: 2018-05-01

Creator: Samuel Monkman

Access: Open access

This project explores the logical structure of moral dilemmas. I introduce the notion of genuine contingent moral dilemmas, as well as basic topics in deontic logic. I then examine two formal arguments claiming that dilemmas are logically impossible. Each argument relies on certain principles of normative reasoning sometimes accepted as axioms of deontic logic. I argue that the principle of agglomeration and a statement of entailment of obligations are both not basic to ethical reasoning, concluding that dilemmas will be admissible under some logically consistent ethical theories. In the final chapter, I examine some consequences of admitting dilemmas into a theory, in particular how doing so complicates assignment of blame.


Shaping Canons and Building Legacies: Collectors and the History of African American Art

Date: 2019-01-01

Creator: Kinaya Hassane

Access: Open access



The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting

Date: 1964-01-01

Access: Open access

The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting (1964) is an exhibition catalogue documenting an art exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, curated by Marvin S. Sadik.


Walker Art Building Murals

Date: 1972-01-01

Creator: Richard V. West

Access: Open access

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Occasional papers, 1.


Context Considered: Perspectives on American Art

Date: 1996-01-01

Creator: Linda Jones Docherty

Access: Open access

"This brochure accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine, from April 17 through June 2, 1996"--P. preceding t.p Exhibition curated and brochure prepared in collaboration with 12 Bowdoin students, classes 1994-1997.


Bowdoin Alumnus Volume 14 (1939-1940)

Date: 1940-01-01

Access: Open access